The UK Labour government have announced a subsidy of £5000 for electric and plug-in hybrid cars. Plug-in hybrid cars can be recharged from the mains or ‘on the go’ by a conventional engine.
The bad news is that the subsidy won’t be available until 2011 – after the next General Election, when Labour are highly unlikely to be still in power.
The other bad news is the amount of money set aside – £250m. That is enough for 50,000 electric cars out of UK car sales of over 2 million a year. Maybe they’d be better off spending the money on putting charging stations where all those derelict petrol stations are.